March 30, 2008
Easter 2, John 20:19-31
Last weekend was glorious, wasn’t it?
The Easter vigil with the fire burning outside, the ancient ritual of lighting our new paschal candle, watching by candlelight as the altar was dressed and the flowers appeared while the stories of salvation were read and sung about. And I’ve been thinking ever since about John’s sermon that night about the rough, unpredictable line between darkness and light, and the strange sensation of moving in one service from the somber darkness of Lent to the joyous alleluias of Easter. Then there was the giddy fun of popping a champagne cork for communion, and our sumptuous party afterwards.
And then Easter morning – what could be better than Easter morning! With the flowers cascading over the altar, the baskets hanging from each pole, these majestic sunny banners flowing overhead, triumphant music, and a church packed with enthusiastic people -- old friends and new, relatives and loved ones. I wish every Sunday morning gathering could feel like that.
But it was more than the music, the flowers, the crowd. Even more, for me at least, was that this past weekend I really got Easter. I felt so thankful for God’s great gift to us, for filling us with the hope, and joy, and miracle of the resurrection. So relieved to be brought out of Lent. To get to say our alleluias again. To feel Jesus alive and somehow very tangible. And, maybe for the first time, that feeling of Easter infected me completely. I was everything I most want to be – loving, generous, hospitable, positive, forgiving, energetic, ungrumpy.
Of course, not content to just bask in the glow of Easter, it made me wonder why every Sunday doesn’t feel that way. Every day, really. Because we are an Easter people, or we profess to be, at least. Every day is Easter for us – even in the darkest moments of Lent. As Christians, we are post-resurrection every day. That gift of Jesus alive and present is our gift all the time.
I do realize that it’s not terribly realistic to expect that every Sunday would be as meaningful and miraculous as Easter Sunday. For one thing, we’d all be exhausted from all the work it would require to keep up the flowers, the food, the choir practice, the liturgy. And it’s even less realistic to expect to personally remain that elated and fulfilled everyday. Just put me ten minutes inside one of Dylan’s tantrums and I’m ready to renounce all that is holy and good, much less an actual crisis. And yet I wish that I could keep hold of that Easter joy, that feeling of being so alive, that almost-physical certainty of God’s presence with us.
But it seems that our inability to feel Easter all the time is the human condition, and we are not alone in our inability to re-create the enthusiasm and joy of Easter every Sunday, much less every day. It looks like Jesus’ best friends and disciples had the same problem. Even they couldn’t manage to keep that resurrection feeling. On Easter night – the very evening of the day of resurrection, even though Mary had seen two angels and met the Risen Lord and reported it to the disciples, even though “the beloved disciple” had understood the connection between empty tomb and risen Jesus, nonetheless, that very night we find the disciples locked up in a house in fear. They aren’t out spreading the good news; they aren’t celebrating with other believers, giddy with the joy of the resurrection; they aren’t even out following Jesus’ example of caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, eating with sinners. Maybe we can give them the benefit of the doubt and hope they were at least in there praying together. But, frankly, they just seem to be hunkering down, frozen in terror that the people that crucified Jesus might come after them next.
So our phenomenon is not a new one. What is it that keeps us, like those earliest disciples, from holding on to our Easter experiences? What stops us from keeping the doors of our hearts unlocked? From leaving the rooms in which we have ensconced ourselves – the rooms that might feel comfortable and safe but are really keeping us from being as joyful and life-filled as we could be outside of them?
Like those first disciples, we find ourselves in this strange place of “already but not yet.” As Christ Church’s banner for the Easter season puts it, “Ready, Set … Wait.” With Jesus’ resurrection, God has triumphed. Evil and suffering and sorrow and pain and death (and the smaller things, like boredom and tiredness and grumpiness and jealousy) are ultimately vanquished. But, in a way that I wish I could more fully understand, their effects still linger. The Kingdom of God has been ushered in, but we can feel and see and live it only in part.
And so we’re incapable, heart-breakingly, of maintaining that Easter feeling all the time. We can have wonderful glimpses of our new, risen-with-Jesus selves -- moments when we can get outside of what we think we want and need, and really live like Jesus might have us live. But we also still are who we are, which is people that are sometimes petty, sometimes ungracious, sometimes unforgiving.
We can catch dazzling sightings of a new humanity, people living as children of God in unity and love and charity. But people still are who they are, which means that our experiences of them are also sprinkled liberally with occasions of cruelty, arrogance, and selfishness.
We can sometimes make out just a hint of a new creation, an earth where lion and lamb lay down together, and there is bounty for all. But the world still is what it is – full of hunger, disease, oppression and war.
So maybe our post-Easter Sunday question is how to live the best we can as an Easter people in a not-yet-perfectly completed Easter world. How to feel ourselves an Easter people when we are surrounded by temptations to be anything but. How to remember those all-too-fleeting moments when we do know ourselves to be in the presence of the risen Lord. And how to trust God in the times when we don’t.
Looking back to the disciples and their post-Easter experience might help. In the midst of their anxiety, despite their inability to move out into the world, Jesus somehow appears with them in that locked room. And he is so kind, so giving, so forgiving as he bestows his peace – God’s peace – upon them. He relieves any remaining doubt the disciples may have had about his resurrection by showing them his pierced hands and side. It is not a ghost, not an apparition, not a trick; Jesus is alive and present with them. He breathes the Holy Spirit – the breath of life – upon them. And he commissions and empowers them for the work they have to do.
Just as the risen Jesus was with those disciples cowering in that locked room in fear, when we are shut up in our locked rooms, with our closed hearts and our anxieties, the risen Jesus is somehow in the midst of us. Bringing us peace, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, joy, and healing. Whenever and however we’re ready to receive it. And just as the Holy Spirit moved among those early friends of Jesus as they went out into an often hostile and unwelcoming world, the Holy Spirit moves within and among us. Empowering us to live as, and proclaim ourselves to be, people of God. At least some of the time.
Maybe part of being an Easter people is somehow knowing that God is with us even when we are not mentally, physically, or spiritually with God.
Which is, ultimately, a more robust and enduring Easter experience than one that relies just upon a happy mood, church attendance, pretty flowers, well-behaved children, good health, or a steady bank account.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
Elizabeth Rees